Cal, I'm a Benedictine monk in Missouri. I have a disagreement with a part of your deep life stack Discipline is not an identity per se but rather a tool for developing and solidifying an identity You use value as a criteria for leading a meaningful and purposeful life shaped through code ritual and routine You readily assert that you need discipline for a value to take hold but discipline needs a reason Yeah, it's a good question I you know, I get this debate a lot is I think it's one of the more unique and controversial aspects of my conception of Cultivating a deep life where I say discipline comes first No, it's Ian here disagrees part of this is semantic.

I Think discipline is an an overloaded word. We have a lot of connotations with it often negative We think about discipline sometimes as something being enforced upon us The cruel headmaster disciplining the kids. We also have connotations with discipline with those who are Idolizing making a false god out of discipline itself where we have my all that matters is the Discipline of what I do and the harder things I do and other people won't do these things this hard and all of my self-worth just comes entirely from my discipline this is the sort of David Goggins style philosophy of sort of building your identity around Extreme feats of discipline.

This was an idea that was really big and supported by Instagram culture sort of over the last decade So it's an overloaded term. So let's let's use a different term just for this conversation efficaciousness So efficaciousness describes the degree to which you believe yourself able to actually Take action towards goals.

If you're an efficacious person you say yes in general I am someone who if I have something I want to do and it's reasonable I can do it I can figure out how to do it my argument having spent a lot of time with people who are trying to turn around their lives is that That is missing a lot of times and if that is missing nothing else works even trying to determine what your values are and Believing that you can build your life around those values even that seemingly fundamental decision lays on a foundation of efficaciousness If you do not see yourself as someone who can take action towards important things Even if it's not obligated and even if it's hard if you do not see yourself as a person who can do that Almost any other self developmental activity is going to be derailed.

It's going to dissipate before it actually takes hold Now there's other people and probably a ton. I mean you're you're a Benedictine monk So you're probably an exemplar of this other type of person where they just have the strong sense of efficaciousness And so what matters like right off the bat then is like, okay Let me figure out my values and build my life around it But most people the average person stumbles before they get there.

So when I say discipline is an identity what I don't mean is What matters is that you build your identity around discipline? That you become David Goggins or Cameron Haynes that like how you define yourself and your value is through your discipline and I agree with You fully there at team that that's not That's false idol.

That's not going to get you there But on the other hand, I think until you have built a minor foundation of efficaciousness Your efforts are likely going to be wasted the average person's efforts are likely going to be wasted So that's why I put discipline first. You have to just start by convincing yourself I can do things and there's an excitement and a motivation and a clarity and a drive that comes out of that that when you then Say, okay.

So what do I care about? You actually care about that question and You take it more seriously and the answers actually stick I'm so kind of convinced about this foundational idea that I've been recently playing around with my deep life stack and One of the configurations I've been playing around with more recently actually has a much clearer division between laying the foundations and Then cultivating depth now and I'm not this is very early stages.

I'm just throwing out ideas here But one of the reconfigurations I've been playing with in my notebooks recently is one where it's not just discipline comes first But maybe we're gonna do discipline control and maybe even throw in something like craft So first of all, how do I convince myself?

I'm efficacious second of all How do I just take control of all the stuff in my life learn how to have control over what's on my plate and how? It's going to get done and and how to take things off of my plate And maybe throw in their craft.

Okay. Now, let me teach Let me take this out for a spin and show myself that I can actually get good at something When I set my mind to it and almost seeing that in this new configuration, I'm playing with that's the foundation Now with that foundation set let's get serious about that and that's step two now.

It's okay. What do I what do I really value? Now I'm ready to tackle that question seriously Sacrifice how am I sacrificing my time and attention on behalf of other people? Community around me people I care about let's get serious about that there's no meaning without that and then finally escape or remark ability then now, how do I Leave my legacy.

How do I create the remarkable aspects of my life built around these values? I mean I'm almost seeing now is like a very clear separation where there's this long process of just becoming to borrow a term from Jocko an exceptionally capable human being And then once you do that you say now I could become an exceptionally deep human being and I think when we sometimes swap these Things around it's not successful for people some people it is but I think a lot of people starting with the depth before they have the capability Leads to a lot of self recrimination and dissipation.

It might lead people to believe I'm just not able to do this I'm just fundamentally a broken person. I I'm trying to like build my life around values. I can't identify him. I don't trust the values I pick it can almost be harmful if you jump right to the cultivating depth before you've done the Boring hard work of becoming a capable human being in the first place So, I don't know I'm still playing with these thoughts of teen so I'd like the excuse To just discuss and get some more feedback and I love this type of feedback But that's a little bit of an insight into how I've been thinking about this recently All right, let's do one more question before we do our live call-in case study which I'm excited about Sounds good next questions from Yalan.

Hi Cal until three years ago. I used to be a deep life person I had a schedule for each day. I studied a lot slept Well, my phone was on airplane or silent mode for most of the day the usual stuff But since then I've been losing my charm I'm having a really hard time making time for studying or even reading I almost never plan anything ahead anymore and I've been seriously addicted to video games I'm an English teacher and I have my obligations, but I never do anything beyond the Obligatory area what's more being a teacher in Israel makes you become hooked on your phone because there are so many Notifications updates regarding what's going on with the school.

You have to be aware of what's going on I want to get back on track and it feels extremely hard and sometimes even impossible You know, just what's interesting about that is a couple nights ago I was giving a talk up at my kids school about Smartphones and kids and social media and kids and I was talking to a family afterwards who just moved here from Israel And they actually had the same point.

They said, you know in in Israel the phone culture is like inescapable And they said here they actually felt like so their kid their middle schooler had a phone and everything said in Israel like everything is built around like whatsapp Notifications and how the schools operate and everything is built around the phone for all these various different reasons and here it feels like it's possible Not to do that.

And so they were wondering can we pull it back? We had that, you know, so it's interesting something about Israel Did you read that on New Yorker article like last month about the Chinese school and like all the what's app and how there's a thousand? Messages day for the parents.

Yeah, I was like completely overwhelmed like the same thing. Yeah. Yeah So I think cultural differences and tech patterns is an interesting one, but to get back to the bigger issue here I think this goes right back to the question with the Benedictine monk that we just answered So what we see here is kind of the opposite so so the the Benedictine monk, this is basically what I mean here is this is sort of What's the right way to put this Yalan I believe has done the become a capable person piece Of the deep life stack you as he talks about he previously Had it all dialed in he's organized He has control over his time and activities and schedules and is careful about how he uses his tools But then he stopped before getting to the stuff that he Tom the Benedictine monk said is important To figuring out your values your vision for your legacy and purpose on earth building your life around that So this is a really interesting point because what it shows is if you just do the first part in my plan Which is like you got to be capable before you can really figure out how to be deep if you just do the capable part You don't know that's going to stick so what happened here you did the capable part and your mind is basically the what purpose and So you began escaping back in the video games and found sort of the capability stuff starting to dissipate again So Yalan what you need to do is keep moving up the deep life stack So once you regain, you know how to do this, so just get back to like, okay intentional multi-scale planning careful about my tools Great.

Now, you got to keep moving up the stack. Now, you got to get really engaged on your values What's my code? What are the rituals I use to remind myself of the value of this code on a regular basis? What is this this vision on which I'm going to build my my lifestyle my purpose on earth?

Maybe then throw in some sacrifice if you're not Sacrificing non-trivial time and attention on behalf of other people. You're not going to feel fully alive as a human So you're a teacher So there's many ways for you to reintegrate this into your life And then finally you have this sort of escape or mark ability legacy piece where you have some ambitious plans That you put into your life that are meant that are meant to actually Take these things you care about and push them to new extremes and now you're working towards something your Capability your ability to be organized on top of things is being deployed towards something that's important to you.

I think that's what's missing So in the last question I said if you just do the second part but not the first part That's a problem because it's very hard to actually seek depth and sacrifice and have these legacy building projects if you're not a capable human But we're seeing here is if you just do the first part that's not enough either You're being productive for the sake of being productive is eventually going to probably be something that is not fulfilling So we got to see both sides of the stack Neither of them can act in isolation.

You need both of them So you'll on I'm glad glad to give me a chance to talk about that. Hey, if you like this video I think you'll really like this one as well. Check it out